Hynkel: I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

A sound government’s main objective should be to foster and defend a just, safe, and sustainable society in which fairness, curiosity, innovation, and selflessness can flourish.

Justice

Those arrested in apparent protest are entitled to have their grievances heard in court so that the necessity and reasonableness of their actions may be determined.

In a just and prosperous society, there is a minimum acceptable standard of living below which no law abiding citizen should fall. That standard must be sufficient to protect children born into such circumstances from being developmentally or psychologically harmed by the experience. The revenue required to provide that failsafe should be drawn from the most prosperous industries and individuals.

Impoverished children must have access to structures that readily allow escape from poverty as adults.

In a just society there can be no birthright to privilege and power. As such, inherited wealth must be capped at a reasonable level, one that broadly distributes the incentive to achieve things of value.

Every child has the right to a high quality education. Familial wealth does not imply a greater right to mental enrichment.

Modern medical technology and knowledge have been produced with overwhelming public investment, and all people are entitled to benefit from them.

Scientific progress is inherently a public good. All people are equally entitled to access the products of public investments in science.

Any order given to violate the constitutional rights of a citizen, or the human rights of a person, is illegitimate and must be refused.

Any order to use potentially damaging force and/or weapons against non-violent people is illegitimate and must be refused.

Mass arrests of unarmed people can result in detentions of no more than 12 hours.

There is no state of unrest that supersedes the three rules above.

Markets

All the foreseeable costs of private sector actions must be born by the initiators of those actions. Foreseeable harms (to the planet, society or disinterested individuals) that are the byproduct of profitable activity are, in effect, unjust transfers of wealth that must be mitigated with compensatory transfers of wealth from those that profited, toward the interests of those harmed.

Accountability for all private sector decisions and actions must rest with humans. No inanimate structure can insulate individuals from liability for the externalization of foreseeable harms.

All private fiduciary obligations are subordinate to a person’s public sector duties.

Progressive taxation is the natural remedy for patterns of unproductive wealth concentration.

Markets must be governmentally regulated in the public interest.

When an institution must be publicly bailed out, the individuals involved in producing the failure must not be financially enriched, and must be removed from positions of control. Ill gotten gains must be fully recovered and put toward mitigating the harm of the bailout to the public. In the case that the failure was willfully or negligently caused, punitive damages sufficient to discourage analogous failures should be imposed, and put to the same purpose.

Commercial advertising must exist only in an opt-in context. All people must have the practical ability to avoid commercial advertisement entirely, without losing access to the full array of public goods. Advertising directly to children is unacceptable.

Society functions best when people are protected from unforeseeable misfortune, but otherwise pay the costs, and receive the benefits, of their actions. This societal goal is best served in a very large risk-pool, where managers have no profit-motive to withhold coverage from the unfortunate. As such, insurance should, like policing and fire suppression, be a public function.

Sustainability

All human activities with the potential to substantially affect important, complex biotic and abiotic systems should be presumed harmful until demonstrated to be safe.

Humanity must avoid any substantial alteration of the earth and atmosphere which humanity does not have the technological and economic power to reverse.

No generation has the right to substantially degrade the earth for future generations. To the extent that modern human activity is unsustainable, we have an obligation to transition to sustainable modes, in whatever fashion most rapidly and successfully mitigates total net harm.

The safety, security and wellbeing of citizens can not be made contingent on any unsustainable process such as growth in population, or growth in the economy.

Government

Only creatures can have rights. Inanimate objects and structures can not. In moral and legal terms, humans are the only “people”. Corporations may have privileges granted to them in the public interest. Corporations that habitually produce more public harm than good are not entitled to persist.

It’s important to get a “sponsor” in twelve step programs. Being based on a spiritual experience these programs offered the role of the sponsor. This is a person who has “got it”. Often times they subsequently “lose it” but purpose of the relationship is to transfer the mysterious spiritual experience. This it truly impossible to describe.

As a person who Identifies as an alcoholic I will never know if I really looked at life that differently from ordinary people. Perhaps some genetic predisposition caused my “disease”. Whatever the case may be I found that the only way I could truly put down the bottle for a long period was by completely changing my outlook on reality. I live under the assumption that your average person or most people never come to a situation were they have to change their behavior in the face of death. Its rather strange to have to just stop doing something or else. In the face of this decision I came to realize that I hadn’t ever really seen a whole picture.
I had these notions about what other people thought and what I was supposed to do but I found my own reasons why I could transgress these rules. It’s not important how or what one actually does its the fact that ones own deeply held sense of what is right is offended. Fighting, anger, remorse, shame, paranoia there are so many ways to stay the focus of your own attention. This process is self defeating and eventually own realizes that inside there is something very much the same about all the other humans we come in contact with.It behooves one to understand that the world is filled with people who may be experiencing things just as we do or perhaps entirely differently but they do experience. If we accept this premise then our consciousness should expand to include the people we come in contact with and ourselves as beings we have a reason to be understanding and forgiving of.

The word sponsor might be misleading in certain ways. It has the connotation that the sponsor is needed to introduce one as an OK fella to the group and to your higher power god figure. This is not the case. The sponsor doesn’t need support to the sponsee in any way materially or mentally. The sponsor brings the voice of the spiritual experience to another person in a time of desperate crisis. Thus one receives the most valuable this life has to offer at the moment of greatest suffering. I can only say this because I experienced it and that is how it seems to me.
The feelings of faith in the human spirit become very strong. One encounters hundreds of people who were just destroyed by life and their disease who never the less describe a new life that is better than any previous one. This leads one to inculcate the story/mythology/process by which a person can undergo a profound change. This change is like the change one might feel taking a psychedelic drug.

The amorphous quality of value we imbue things with changes fundamentally as it is a projected quality in many ways. It gives a feeling of power over the need to control things. Once one begins to see through things one realizes that there are only a few basic human needs which one is provided almost without fail in this country ,however very very few humans are engaged in any productive activity whatsoever. Things that are produced beyond food shelter and community are not really important. It’s not that we don’t FEEL that they are important because they are often the things we find most important in our lives.

But structurally- physically they serve no function to help one live. Cars help one live in little detached huts dotting the landscape but they don’t shelter or feed anyone. How many farmers do you know? How many carpenters?
So why do you work so hard? Why do you keep putting things off? Why does everything depend on money. This is because instead of spending our time in an environment of people telling a story of self transformation we spend our time alone interacting with the mass media. The mass media consists of two forces. The advertisers only care manipulating you into doing something you wouldn’t have thought off doing unless it had been brought to your attention . This fundamental fact underlies all advertisements. You have something of value they want and the only requirement they have is to get it. They just need money. You kinda know this but you feel that it’s OK and it doesn’t have anything to do with the content. But that just is not the case.

The positing of a need or a lack in people is the job of advertisers but it has spilled over to color all the media. The underlying message is you get something for nothing. If you start looking at the box pretty soon you begin to look forward to looking at it. So here is a thing that can capture your attention without you even really having to choose what to do or look at.

I suspect that the act of staring at a two dimensional object without having to move ones head is a radically new human behavior. Of course so is reading a book but there is a very very big difference. This difference does not mean that anyone is intentionally doing anything wrong. It’s just a mechanism inadvertently generated due to the funding mechanism of the mass media. This means that we essentially sell our attention to advertisers with the agreement that they either make or fund broadcast-able events that will in turn capture our attention. Either way it seems the majority of people are either unable or unwilling to choose what to do with their minds.

It’s like humans are just dying to to live like a large carnivore. We just get our our food then sit around looking at stuff or eating. As animals we could not have evolutionarily prepared for the advent of the next tool of transcendence. Like say a cell wall(suddenly cells!), DNA(suddenly evolution)every organelle a cell(suddenly specialization),,various forms of locomotion, sex etc. It’s like huge jumps in “capabilities” suddenly gel. As we get closer to our time we see things like flight and sight developing. It’s weird but it would seem that there does seem to be at least a rudimentary direction to LIFE. First it shows up in some environment like say A tide pool or a hot ocean vent and then “magically” forms appear which can live in other environments. What this takes it some kind of ability which which could not have come about through any experience in the environment the “new” life suddenly finds itself propagating in. Look at an eye It seems so miraculously specialized but this seems to be what happens to life over time. This extreme organization looks extremely over done but senses allowed forms of life to adapt to different environments. But really that is beside the point in a way.
It just seems like one could describe consciousness in a way as another in a long line of strange things like eyes and wings which allow life to somehow start moving in a different space. But then there are now a lot of flying and seeing creatures but it would seem only one conscious one. Wouldn’t it seem like maybe in the future there might be more than one. Perhaps as we can look back and try to find some connection between single celled organisms who interact among each other and sometimes(a a very simple way)us and all these huge multi-cellular beings. Viewed as singular and apart these multicelullar individuals(communities of specialized cells working as a system who boundaries are described by the easily discerned(especially through sight)demarcation between whats on the inside or attached to the bag of skin and what is outside and not attached). interact in ways that viewed through a humans eyes and looking at it western way seem outlandishly more complex.
Or to put it another ways the illusion that we experience through our judgment based on highly specialized organs that evolved for a different reasons in another environment altogether resembles the illusion we get when we use our minds eye or “self” to peer from whatever it exists to somehow “model” the eye as a physical collection of specialized cells that somehow looks like it exists to SEE/sense other collections of cells that are perceived as unities from the vantage point of what seems to be the “reason” the “EYE” exists.

So I propose there is another ” environment ” which our consciousness exists. The “place” of this environment may only be able to seen from the top down (as we model three dimensional space perceived through the physical eye( a collection of specialized cells that look like they are working together to serve conduit for the transmission of three dimension information which is used to model the world. The conception or model that comes out of an illusion created in the brain by a consciousness that exists in another environment but none the less only has “eyes” for our so called physical plane of existence.

The word evil refers to the idea some people entertain that there is some extra-human type of force that guides humanity to act in a manner that harms other people. Strange as it may seem the closest man can get to being evil is to believe that there is an evil force. If one believes there is evil then a few things happen. One may informally observe that the people who fervently believe in evil are the same ones who override the natural voice one hears when listening to ones inner voice, since they believe in evil they can doubt their conscious and do horrible and seemingly inhuman thing to other people. The belief or ideology overrides the natural inclinations to get along with other people and be kind to them. The “do unto others” concept resonates so well because it is in accord with ones natural inclinations. However as a practical matter since the Christians and the Jews and many other religious freaks put an Ideology ahead of a inner knowledge of what one should do they essentially are the evil they profess to believe in and oppose. They do willful and terrible things to other people and believe that’s what some transcendent being who reasons are inscrutable wants them to do. They proceed to bring what is essentially the doing or harmful things to other people without feeling bad about it.

For example people believe in the ideology of democracy and therefore submit to the power of the state thinking this is the right thing to do. For example every American who dutifully pays their taxes is actually funding the murder of other people. They can’t bring themselves to override the ideology with their own sense of justice.

posted 08/09/08

So I I asked yougottabekitten to use her boffo typing skills to transcribe this vintage piece of Russian anarchist writing. This piece was written 0ctober 12 1917 a few weeks before the revolution or perhaps a bit afterward depending on which calender you use (Gregorian or Julian). It caught my eye because it has the same title as the 1992 subgenius video. Anyway I just love it i found it in one of the books pictured below in this post. The book is “the Anarchists in the Russian Revolution” ISBN 0-9014-9141-x.

Arise! (Selitsky)

Arise! Arise people! Proclaim your mighty word: Enough! I do not wish to be an automaton. Away with all despots and parasites. I am a man! I want to live, to create my own life. I have the right to life and happiness. I want my happiness to be the happiness of others as well. I want my destiny to be no longer a plaything in the hands of despotic Gods of heaven or earth. At this moment, at this hour, I take my fate in my own hands and reject any further appeal to visible or invisible Gods.

You, Invisible Gods of the Heavens! You call yourself Gods of justice. But where is your justice? You call yourselves Gods of truth. But where is your truth? You say you are punishing evil. But where is your punishment? You are omnipotent. But where is your power? You are ubiquitous. But where are you then? You are all-knowing Gods – you knew and permitted these crimes. And now that human beings perish by the thousands and the whole earth wallows in blood, you all-powerful Gods are powerless to stop this nightmarish drama of humanity. You are ubiquitous – looking in silence at the sea of tears and the rivers of blood. You have not a drop of compassion for the human beings you have created. You bless this orgy of animal passions. You thrive on blood. You thrive on death. You thrive on humanity’s misfortune.

Thus you are the Gods not of life, but of death, not of happiness, but of misery, not of freedom, but of oppression. You are all of you despots, criminals, tyrants. Bloodthirsty Gods. Your godly machinations are revealed in the following stupid desires: I want – I shall create. I want – I shall take. I want – for myself. I want – so he will remain in a fog.

Arise! Arise then people! Disperse the nightmare surrounding you. Take the voice of truth as your own possession. Put an end to all the stupid desires of earthly and heavenly deities. Say “Enough – I have risen!”